Hey yo, if you want to build yr own Gravity Waaaves check this out
and if you give it a shot and something goes wrong, please reply to this message so it’ll be easy for me to find mistakes/bugs/etc !
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…yep, just ordered everything - a few of the things are not so easy to get over here (europe), but i seem to have found the most import items, others i’ll probably pick up in L.A. next month somewhow - or just pay for the shipping (talking especially about the UCEC Analog Video Adapter)…
…not yet - dared to reply and contribute to this thread anyway…
…hmmm - most of the required pieces have arrived already:
- Jetson Nano Developer Kit
- Case for the above
- Fan for the case
- Meanwell PSU 5V-4A
- 32GB Evo Plus SD
- Peripad 501 II
- and the Accell Displayport-Adapter
…missing - and this will take a little longer - are the QMK-Pad (aliexpress-order) and the Analog-Video-Adapter (has to came over the big pond from the USA)…
…from the Video-Waaaves RPIs i could steal a Nanopad and some USB-3-Hub should be floating around somewhere…
…now the big question is: should i wait for the keypad or can i start putting the stuff together already without getting toooo frustrated?! - the DIY-instructions say i should be fine until the keypad arrives and then things will get even better…
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…ok, it seems my nano is up and running without any problems…
…the Peripad does not seem to work - well, ok, it moves the cursor, but that’s about it…
…at the moment i have an very-very early Apple-USB-keyboard and an old Apple Mouse attached and they work just fine including right-clicking etc. …
…the first start took less than 10 seconds - nowhere near the 3-5 minutes announced in the docs…
…one point that might easily slip by is the setting of the screen resolution when initialising the screens: 1280x720 - otherwise there will be an overlap of the control-window/screen to the second screen (which my system insists on being screen 1)…
…at the moment everything seems to be running within an account namend ‘andrei’; this account also has a password assigned, which can only be overwritten if one knows the current password! (BUG?)…
…no i’d have to find the Gravity Waaaves documentation - i am sorry to say that i do not understand the interface at all, nor does the second display show anything when playing around with the controls on the ‘left’ screen…ah! - and regarding controls: first time i started Gravity Waaaves i saw some error message related to MIDI rushing by in a terminal window - i guess this had something to do with the Nanokontrol not being plugged in; on the next start with the Nanokontrol plugged in i did not see an error message, but the Nanokontrol does not seem to actually ‘control’ anything in the interface (looked at different tabs and moved a lot of controls on the Nanokontrol but nothing happened)…
…all in all: a very nice and hasslefree start…
…hmmm - after i moved the Gravity Waaaves window (the application btw. is ‘unknown’ in the menubar) i found the terminal window behind it continuously throwing a couple of errors every second:
…i tried to repair the missing (i guess) library according ofxGstreamer on M1 Mac - #42 by pemb - advanced - openFrameworks - but to install i would need the password of user ‘andrei’ on the nano:
…so, at the moment i guess we need a new image-file to flash the SD-card…
there is a slightly updated image as of yesterday, however as mentioned in the docs, you should have 2x of the recommended video to usb devices plugged in when running GW. and if you have them plugged in but have no video coming through you are going to be highly confused. there are no missing gstreamer libraries and would recommend not fucking around too much with the system unless you are ok with reflashing cards on a regular basis/have lots of experience and patience with arch-linux. a full manual will be available in about a month, until then best i can offer is to reach out to folks in the VSE discord gravity_waaaves channel for tips. password is currently set to ‘password’
…the 2 USB-input-devices? - i understood the docs completely different - there it says ‘do not plug them in yet’…
…i can try and plug devices in i have here (i do have a couple of the HDMI-2-USB-dongles here, for the ‘special’ AV-2-USB-adapter i’ll have to wait but i could try some of those - which look exactly the same - that i have here too)…
…good to hear - and no: i am just a user and do not want to go deeper into the system…reflashing the SD-card as part of the beta-testing, that i am fine with, no problem…
…with the new image:
- there is no menubar anymore (no possibility to shut down the nano - pull powerplug)
- Gravity Waaaves starts and quits again
- but it seems to recognize the connected dongles
…13 seconds video of what happens:
i think you should re read the docs one more time 
i’ve got about 20 folks testing out GW for me already and stuffs is been working good so far, so to the absolute best of my knowledge if you plug the right stuff into it at the right times it is pretty much guaranteed to work. if you don’t then pretty much no amount of jury rigging is going to smooth things out.
…thank you for your patience…
…i‘ll start over again…and report…
…hmmm - i am not sure why, but it seems that i am ‘up & running’ - kind of…
…GW does not like my AV-USB-converter and tells me so by just quitting without any message…using the HDMI-USB-converter works (almost*) flawlessly…
—intermission—
*almost meaning: it is not enough to just connect the converters - which produce a rainbow-pattern by themselves if there is no signal passing through (and that rainbow-pattern i was assuming should be enough to keep GW initially entertained) - one has to have some signal pass through the converters which i then did by attaching two GoPros which in turn made GW really happy and willing to function as expected…
—intermission—
…the ‘desktopy-thing’ still has no upper menubar - it somehow vanished when configuring the displays - which i had to do several times, switching back and forth between resolutions, until i (accidently?) made it remember the correct screen-assignments, their resolutions and their positions…
…for debugging i should now unplug everything, flash the SD again and try to repeat the steps until i can reliably replicate what to do to get a working system in one go…i’ll do that, but not today…sorry…
…feature request:
please indicate (eg. in the GW interface) which MIDI-‘command’ (note, CC, etc.) controls which GUI-item - perhaps just by adding that information to the controls name-tag?
As i am struggling with the Korg Nanokontrol (in general) i would like to provide my own MIDI-Controller-Hardware and set it up respectively this would make that very easy.
Also: repeatedly i was not able catch an onscreen-controls initial value with the Korg Nanokontrol - it would just ‘slide’ over that value, not picking up the control and thereby making it very hard to understand which physical control relates to which onscreen control…
…minor setback: it seems that one has to unplug all the video-in-stuff to be able to boot up the nano - otherwise it is just stuck at the intro-screen and after a few moments reboots again…
…so, the sequence to (re-) boot is:
- shut down the nano
- unplug the two video-in-sources from the USB
- boot the nano
- when it is up re-plug the video-in dongles
- start GW
…another observation: GW does not retain selections from the GUI - when i set the MIDI/GUI-checkmark in a session the checkmark is gone after a restart…
sounds like everything is working as best it can with the available hardware you are using atm. you will want to have 2 separate signals coming into GW if you are trying to figure out how it works. imagine trying to figure out how to use any video mixer with no signals (or just two identical test patterns) coming in and you will see what i mean.
Lets keep feature requests out of this thread for now and prioritize it for folks getting started with the DIY build and getting started process. we can start another thread with that as the main topic if and/or when enough folks in the community here have all been using GW for at least a month or two.
…will you announce in this thread when there are updates to the GW-image or is there another place we should check regularly?…
…ah! - yeah - i am not into Discord - might be nice for chitchat but doesnt seem to be meant to built a ‚resource‘ that you could check on later or search for information…
any large changes in GW images will be announced via my website. would only expect 1 more update in the next couple months and that will come with instructions on how to do it easier style. discord isn’t exactly my favorite either but thats where all the GW beta testers are hanging out rn so thats the best place to ask questions and get answers from a community instead of a mildly grumpy andrei saying ‘please re read the documentation’ 
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…i‘ll try to bribe you next time i‘m in Newark (usually for about 20 hours, should be enough to get to Brooklyn for a nice vegetarian dinner) to get you into a more gracious mood - might take a few months though…
…in case you‘re in L.A. in march it could happen this month already…
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in block 3 - b1 geometry, theres a check box for rotate mode. I expected it to start rotating the image but it just kinda shears it slightly. are there parameters (direction/speed) for that?
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